I want to add to that, In The Mood For Love captures a very fundamental loss of identity in the period of the Hong Kong takeover transition. Everyone complaining about the costumes seem to be missing the point that these characters are in between and old Western colonised culture and moving into a new supposed to be more authentic but because its too late you can never call the Chinese identity a home anymore. That's why the characters feel dislocated, ungrounded and don't do anything.
In many ways, you can see the results of being forced into this strange transition with the protests that happened last year. It was 15 years of doing nothing due to an incapability to really understand what it means to live in Hong Kong.